ENMU Radio/TV Department, Part 6: The Bad

Yesterday, I confessed that I was partially to blame for my inability to get a good career in broadcasting after I graduated from college. Keep in mind that I was working full time in the industry at the end of my schooling, but there was just no way I was going to ever make very good money.

I honestly did not put as much effort as I should into becoming one of the best Radio/TV students at Eastern New Mexico University. This was because I focused so much energy into the Theatre Department. That happened because I more in common with those students. I didn't have the same connect with the students in the Radio/TV Department. This was because the primary focus was on producing news and not entertainment programming.

I did express a desire to do something more entertainment-related, but the Radio/TV faculty didn't help me much there. They could have suggested I go elsewhere, but retention is always an issue at ENMU, and they weren't ready to lose a student to a program that would be more geared for a career they were more suited for.

I should point out that I am not the only Radio/TV student who felt like he got the short end of the stick. There were several others who came up empty-handed after graduating. In the Class Notes of the Alumni newsletter, this one person actually wrote that he had an air shift at an all-volunteer radio station in the middle of nowhere and made it sound like a major accomplishment. But that person wrote a rather humble essay in the Alumni Directory five years ago. He didn't crow about his "professional" acheivements, but focused more on his family.

Probably the largest issue was the work-study program. If you were lucky enough to get in, then you had all the opportunities practically handed to you on a silver platter. If you were on work-study, you got to spend up to 40 hours a week learning all of the ins and outs of every section there at the Broadcast Center. And it seemed like the powers that be never really worked very hard to keep students from abusing the program. I know students who would clock in anytime they were at the Center, so they would get paid during classes that were held there. There were students who went too far, like some would clock in before a weekend assignment and clock out when it was over, expecting to get paid for the 36 hours they were away.

It should be noted that work-study only paid minimum wage, which was $3.35 an hour at the time. But if your schooling was already paid for, it just provided you with a lot of extra money for non-essentials, like pizza and beer.

I tried to get into work-study and filled out the paperwork for the financial aid. I was rejected because my parents made too much money. And it probably didn't help that I was able to pay all my college expenses upfront. From the school's perspective, I didn't need financial aid. However, I noticed that a lot of the students appeared to be better off than me were enjoying all the benefits of learning every detail about the department and getting a paycheck every two weeks.

So, how were they getting on work-study? I have one theory, but I could be completely wrong. I refer to this as the "Emancipation Scam." All the students' parents made too much money for them to qualify. However, if they stated that their parents no longer claimed them as dependents, their own financial situation would show that they were in dire need of funding for college. They would then qualify. When I put in my application, I had to include a copy of my parents' tax return. It was very easy for students to dummy up a fake 1040 showing that they weren't being claimed and submit it to the Financial Aid office, which had no way of verifying if the information was real.

Another issue with the work-study is that there were actual paid positions for students in the TV News department that wasn't necessarily connected to work-study. One was the Student News Director. However, they tended to award that position to the student with the most experience. That student got there by being on work-study.

I knew none of the upper classmen in the Radio/TV department before starting school. The other students who got on work-study likely learned of the cheat from students they knew who got there before them. They knew what to do. I didn't, and my mind was not devious enough to come up with something like this. I was (and still am) basically an honest person. Even in my financial aid application, we mentioned that my mother had taken a leave of absence from her job and the family had taken on the expense of an extra child (Johad) that year. None of this swayed the powers that be.

I don't know how the department operates now. I know that they do a little more with producing entertainment, but the larger issue is having the accessibility to all of the aspects of broadcasting the university has to offer. A few years ago, I had hoped to pay a visit to the school and see how the Radio/TV department handles the current student load. That didn't work out.

I think I would have gotten a lot more out of it if I were a student today.

ENMU Radio/TV Department, Part 5: The Good

From last week's posts, it would appear that a lot of the problems I encountered in the Radio/TV Department at Eastern New Mexico University had to do with the choices I made at that time. This is partially true. However, I would like to use today's post to point out that I had a lot of great opportunities to prepare me for the real work at ENMU.

As I mentioned last week, ENMU had an outstanding reputation for its Radio/TV department. They would make use of the latest technology to put on a quality newscast and local PBS and NPR programming.

They had two TV studios in the Broadcast Center, one that was strictly for use by the students. The equipment in there was older, but still very useful in learning the basics. Once you got a grip on the old equipment, it was easy to learn the new stuff.

The FM station, also located in the Center, was automated, with the exception of live NPR programming. Once you learned the ropes, it was fairly easy to run and you were able to get other projects around the station accomplished. I never worked on the board operator side of that. I only worked in the News department, but saw how everything worked. For the most part, the board operators just sat around and chatted. One person said all they did at night was talk about sex during the shift.

The TV News department had an exceptional faculty, who really knew the importance of journalism and how it related to presentation on TV. There were several classes dedicated to learning how to write the news and produce video segments for the newscast.

They also had the PBS membership drives. I volunteered for a few of those, mostly operating camera. At times, I would run the audio, which was actually more difficult than operating a studio camera. Dr B, the head of the Radio/TV Department, hosted one I worked at and made reference to me while we were on the air.

As you can see, I had a lot of chances to succeed in the Radio/TV department and land a better job when I graduated from college. I have to admit that I am mostly to blame for my shortcomings. During my senior year, I felt like I wasted three years in the Theatre Department when I should have spent that time building my credibility in broadcasting. (I'll be going into detail about the whole Theatre experience later.)

At the time, I felt like I was doing everything I could to be the best Radio/TV student around. I look back and I see that was not the case. But I will admit that there were a few obstacles that I was not certain I could overcome. These issues I will explore with tomorrow's post.

This is a really short post. I was hoping I had a lot more positive things to say.

Life has its quiet moments

Sometimes, you have to stop and look at things a little more closely to see something unique and unusual.



The funny thing is that there are other videos on YouTube that show the same thing. I guess we all had time to kill while filling our gas tanks.

ENMU Radio/TV Department, Part 4: Senior Year

After a spectacularly abysmal junior year, I was ready to just get my final year of formal education out of the way. Originally, I was supposed to be able to graduate in December of 1985. However, during my junior year, there were two classes required for both my majors that were offered on the same days at the same time. I knew then that I was in for the full four years. I wanted to finish in 3 1/2 years so I could feel like some sort of genius for once.

The year before, the Radio/TV Department was on the cusp of falling apart. The followed the departure of Dr. B the year before and the unexpected departure of the new department head in January. Two new faculty members were added. The department was starting to feel like it was getting back on its feet.

I decided that I was going to do one more Broadcast Workshop in TV News. No one tried to stop me. I had auditioned in previous years to be a reporter, but I never made the cut. This time, I was going to try to be a field cameraman. We had to do a lot of reading up on the equipment (which was different from the field equipment I used in Advanced TV Production). We had to pass the test before we could go out on assignments. Because it was taking so long for the tests to be administered, I actually was proactive and asked what I could do for my four hours a week. They said I could go out and shoot weather videos. These would be short video clips that got used in the background of the weather forecasts. I drove all over town finding nice visuals for the newscasts. No one ever complained about the content I brought back.

Finally, we got to take the test on the field equipment. We all failed, but I got the highest score. It was a very tough test. The News Director had us take another test. We all failed again, so we had to take a third test. This time, we all passed because it had questions from both previous tests. The News Director gave us a stern lecture about learning how to use the equipment.

Since we passed, we could finally go out on assignments. I got to do a number of different stories around town, but nothing really special. But then again, nothing really special ever happened in Portales, so I don't know what I was expecting.

I had one more semester left. I signed up for Broadcast Workshop and was going to do TV News again. But I finally got a full-time position at the radio station where I had been working part-time for the past 18 months. Since I was going to be working the overnight shift, I dropped a lot of classes that were not needed for my degree plans.

The final class I had to take was FCC Regulations. It was at 9am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. At the beginning of the semester, the new department head Dr. P, said that attendance was part of the grade. If we missed a certain number of classes or were tardy a certain number of times, our grades would be reduced 10%. If we continued to miss classes, it would drop another 10% and so on. Because of that overnight shift, I almost never made it to class on time and missed more than my allotment for a passing grade. I spoke to Dr. P about this predicament, but he assured me that he understood my unique situation and agreed that my absences would not count for more than 10% off my grade. I got a B for the semester. I was glad there was one person in the department I could count on when I really needed it.

At the very least, I had a full-time job when I graduated from college. I remember that right before commencement, we were in our gowns and getting ready to go into the arena for the ceremony. One of the people who scaled the heights of the Radio/TV Department was saying, "I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't have a job!" But I knew he didn't have much to worry about because he was really good looking. That's why he was one of our newscast's main student anchors. I was right. He eventually progressed and became the Vice President and General Manager of a TV station in Terre Haute, IN. He still looks good.

Looking back, I know I could have done better in the Radio/TV Department if I had just concentrated on that area. Instead, I was torn by my passion for live theatre and spent too much time trying to climb the ladder in that department, without much avail. My experience there will serve as another series in the near future.

Next week, I'm going to examine the good and the bad in the Radio/TV Department and what I could have done about it to keep from being such a loser.

ENMU Radio/TV Department, Part 3: Junior Year

Prior to starting my junior year, I had landed a part-time job working at a radio station in Clovis. I thought this would help my status in the Radio/TV Department.

Dr. B, who had been the backbone of the Radio/TV Department for more than a decade, left for another school. Dr. B had been my faculty advisor, so this meant I was going to have to deal with someone new. He was replaced by Dr. E. I believe Dr. E was from India. I didn't really get to know him very well. I only met with him once during the Fall semester to figure out my classes for the Spring semester.

In the fall, I took the Audio Production class. It was taught by Dr. G, who had taught my Beginning TV Production class the year before. A few class sessions in, she took the class into the radio production studio. However, she told some of us more experienced students to go into the main FM studio and the staff would show us some more advanced stuff. Since I was working part-time at the radio station in Clovis, that qualified me as "more experienced." After the class, she told the four of us that we were too advanced for the class and she wanted to set us aside in an unofficial "Advanced Audio Production" class. We would have to do five audio projects, which were to be aired on the FM NPR station. We would only have to show up on class on Mondays, when she would be lecturing. We would spend the other two class sessions working on our projects.

For my projects, I did a series titled "Backstage," which focused on the productions put on by the Theatre department. In addition to the two mainstage productions that semester, I did shows on a senior's recital and the Evening of One Acts. I thought they turned out very well and I enjoyed actually doing a series. Everyone else did one-off projects that weren't connected to each other.

So, all and all, it was a decent, but not groundbreaking semester. Even though the radio station I worked at changed owners and format and became the talk of Portales and Clovis, I still was not well regarded in the department.

I had signed up for the Advanced TV Production class for the Spring semester. Dr. E was teaching it. In Beginning TV Production, we learned how to use the equipment in the studio. I knew that students in the advanced class learned how to use the field equipment. I was looking forward to this. However, on the first day of the class, Dr. E spelled out what was going to take place during the class. He said there was going to be a lot of lectures and discussion of theory in television production. For our final project, we would produce a five minute news magazine-type segment, which would include an in-studio interview and film footage. I was stunned. This was not the class I was expecting. We were not going to learn how to use the field equipment. I did not feel like I was going to get the experience I needed to work in the television industry. I was strongly considering dropping the class.

Two days later, Dr. E did not show up for class. Dr. G was there instead and announced that Dr. E had left his position the day before and wouldn't be returning to teach at ENMU. She then asked about his plans for the class and if we had any comments. I spoke up right away and told her that I thought the class would be about creating projects with the field equipment. Everyone else chimed in that this was what they also wanted. Dr. G agreed to this lesson plan. Since she had to pick up a lot of his classes, she agreed that we would meet in class once a week and spend the rest of the time working on our projects.

During my sophomore year, the faculty announced that students in the department would only be allowed to take four Broadcast Workshops in their degree plans. They were having a problem with too many students signing up for the workshops and not enought space to place them. This ticked me off at the time because I felt like I had wasted one of my workshops on TV Ops during my freshman year and that I hadn't really learned much of anything in the TV Newscast.

I took the request to heart and did not sign up for any Broadcast Workshops during the 1984 Spring semester or the 1984 Fall semester since I only had one left. I really felt like I was losing ground. However, I noticed that all the other students did not abide by the request. They still kept taking the workshops and there were no repercussions.

I decided to use up my "last" workshop in the FM News department during the Spring 1985 semester. I had to go through an audition. The News Director, Ms. K, who was a graudate student, went ahead and approved me. She told me that one of the things I needed to do was read the paper on a daily basis.

Everything was fine the first few weeks. I came in twice a week, two hours a day. I was learning the ropes, how to write news stories and conduct interviews to get soundbites. We were about to get to the point where I was going to do live news announcements. However, there was a change in command. A Radio/TV student, who had graduated in December 1984, came back to ENMU to work a full time position in the FM News department. After he graduated, he had gotten a job with the station KRSY in Roswell doing the news, but he was only there a couple of months before he quit. I think they were making him sell advertising while he was out covering stories. I don't think he was Ms. K's boss, but it was definitely a two-boss situation.

For some reason, he didn't approve of anything I did. And this carried over to Ms. K, who actually seemed to like me before. I think the main problem was that I was only in the program as part of the Broadcast Workshop. One of the things the advisors told us was that, under no circumstances, were we to work more than four hours a week in our workshops. I guess there were liability issues. So, a problem would arise when I hit my two-hour mark. There was always work that needed to be done and they only seemed to have those assignments available when I was about to leave. In addition, if I came to the station early to read the Albuquerque Journal before my shift started, they would express disbelief that I wasn't helping out right away. I think Mr. S and Ms. K were used to students who were on work-study gladly volunteering to stay extra and help out. I was not on work-study. (In a future post, I will go into detail about issues with the Radio/TV department's work-study program.) Pretty soon, all I was doing was filing stories away and they would send me home early. I didn't get to write any more stories and I didn't get to announce.

Once, I came in and they weren't around. I took initiative and called out and got an interview for a story. They came back and I told him I had done the interview. Without really looking at me, he replied, "That's great, can you file these stories?" A few days later, he asked about that story. I told him that I had previously informed him that I had conducted the interview and handed the tape to him. I also added that he basically ignored me. He said I should have tried harder to communicate with him.

I got a D for the Workshop. I got the grade during the summer and called up Ms. K. She told me I got that grade because it seemed like everything they told me went in one ear and out the other. I told her that they weren't letting me do anything. She also told me I didn't try hard enough to do more. At this point, I realized I had wasted another Broadcast Workshop.

So, yeah. My junior year in Radio/TV was pretty terrible. However, I was able to scavenge something out of it. Twenty years later, I was living in San Jose and looking to get back into radio. The local newsradio station had a part-time position available. I knew that my actual experience at ENMU wouldn't really qualify me for the position. However, I also knew that the person doing the hiring wouldn't be able to verify anything, so I lied on my resume. I put down that I wrote the stories, conducted the interviews and announced the news. Only the third part was an actual lie. (However, I did announce wire copy while at the college AM station.)

I actually got that job and it turned full-time within six months. In 2009, I was contacted by ENMU regarding its upcoming Alumni Directory. I was told that I could write an essay explaining what I had been up to. I used that opportunity to gripe about the way I was treated in FM News and bragged about how I was working in the 10th largest city in the United States. However, before it got published, I was laid off from my full-time position and shafted back to part-time doing overnights on the weekends. I suddenly remembered the essay and was able to change it before the deadline. It was not quite as harsh, but I still still able to make a few jabs.

I know that Ms. K went on to work for some women's academic foundation in its PR department in Albuquerque, but I'm not able to find anything solid that she has done lately. As for Mr. S, I was aware that five years ago, he was working in the academic world teaching college journalism. At first, I thought that he never really had a job in the real world, but I recently found out I was wrong. He did work for three news outlets in New Mexico, including at KOB-TV in Albuquerque. However, each position only lasted about a year. He has spent way more time working in academia. I should also add that he got a doctorate in education.

But I still don't feel like either one ever accomplished what I was able to. It's too bad I never got to rub it in their faces.

ENMU Radio/TV Department, Part 2: Sophomore Year

I became more entwined in the Radio/TV Department during my second year in college. I had gained some good and bad experiences my first year and was looking forward to increasing my chances of working in broadcasting after I graduated from college.

But I still had some rough classes to get through. The roughest was a class intended to improve our ability to speak, and for the life of me, I cannot remember the actual title of the class. I will preface it by saying that at Eastern New Mexico University, there were at least four levels of classes at ENMU. They were one, two, three and five-credit courses. Under normal circumstances, the number of credits indicated the level of difficulty in the class. Some of the beginning Math classes were five credits and required attendance five hours a week. Most classes were three credits, or three hours a week. Both the one and two-credit courses were about two hours a week, with the one-credit Physical Education classes (required) running two hours a week.

This particular class was a two-credit course. The schedule listed one hour-long class on Monday and two non-credit workshops which we were required to enroll on Wednesday and Friday at the same time. What was supposed to happen is the entire class was to meet on Mondays for the lecture. Then, we were to be split into two separate groups, one of which would attend the workshop on Wednesdays and the other on Fridays. This would account for the two hours to match the number of credits. However, the professor, who was the college TV station's General Manager, didn't see it that way. He made us attend all three days, had lectures, quizzes and homework assignments every day and there was little actual "workshop" time to improve our speaking abilities. It was practically at a difficulty level of a three-credit class.

His tests were also very challenging. Even though they were mostly true/false, we would have minor changes in the sentences which were hard to pick out. However, once I studied really hard for an upcoming test. I went through and marked the answers that I knew. When I went back to figure out the rest, I noticed I had marked all the answers I knew as "true." I thought for a moment. Is he devious enough to give us a test in which all of the statements are true? I decided he was and marked the rest "true" and handed it in. I was the first to finish. A few others completed their tests about the same time. When we were done, we were allowed to leave the classroom while everyone else finished their tests. We all came to the same conclusion that all the answers were "true." A little while later, the professor came out and told us we would know how we did on the test by the number of answers we marked "false," because they WERE all "true."

I had really been struggling in that class and I was looking forward to having my grade improve because of that test. However, the professor announced the next week that he had lost the tests and the would not count toward our final grade. AAAAUUUGH! I felt lucky to get a B in that class.

For my Broadcast Workshop that semester, I decided to work behind the scenes of our live TV news broadcasts. They had a number of positions for people to work. I was a camera operator in the studio. It was fun getting to run the camera. A little less than halfway into the semester, they had us switch positions, but I was assigned to a different studio camera. I felt like I wasn't really getting a variety of experience. About 2/3 of the way through the semester, I asked the student Floor Manager (with other students present) if we were going to switch positions again. All of the students in the studio chimed in and said they wanted to try out the other duties. He said he would look into it, but we never did switch again.

But that really wasn't that big a deal, because the next semester, I got to take Beginning TV Production and learned all those duties anyway. The only thing was that we weren't dealing with an actual broadcast in class, so a lot of the edginess was removed. But we did have a good time. That same semester, I was also taking the Beginning Directing class in the Theatre department. For one of my TV projects, I brought the two actors I had directed in a scene from "Teahouse of the August Moon" into the studio and shot it using the three-camera method. It actually came out pretty good.

That same semester, I also took an Announcing Techniques class. It was an evening class taught by the General Manager of a radio station in Clovis. It was a good class, and we mostly worked on learning how to do live announcements. One evening, our teacher was unable to come and Dr. B substituted for him. That was the night we were supposed to perform TV spots that we had written. Dr. B asked me to be the TV director. I suddenly felt like the top Radio/TV student.

One of the other students in that class, Daz, told me she hoped the teacher would offer her a job at his station. I was actually hoping the same thing for myself, but I didn't know how I would approach him. Daz wound up getting a job there the next year. I got a job at a different radio station in Clovis.

I felt like I had laid down the groundwork for a stellar junior year in the department. This also paralleled my feelings about the Theatre department as well. However, as we'll see in tomorrow's and a future post, I was wrong on both counts.

ENMU Radio/TV Department, Part 1: Freshman Year

I am finally getting to the meat of my college experience. I can write all I want about my friends, enemies, roommates and women I wanted to hook up with, but the real reason I went to college was to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. What I am going to do for the next few weeks is dissect what I went through in the two majors that I declared.

I decided to go to Eastern New Mexico University because their Radio/TV Department had an outstanding reputation for being THE college in New Mexico to learn about Radio and TV broadcasting. They had their own FM and AM radio stations and PBS TV studio. They had the latest in equipment and frequently updated to include the latest in technology.

My mother was shocked at my initial choice for a major. She thought I was only going to minor in Radio/TV and major in something like Computer Science. I liked computers and knew how to program in Basic, but that really didn't appeal to me as something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. As it turns out, Microsoft Windows started making headway in 1985 and everything I would have learned before that would have become completely worthless. (At the insistence of my Mom, I took one computer language class during the summer of 1985. We had no way of knowing that would be a waste of time.)

When I pre-registered for college, I signed up for the Broadcast Workshop class. In this, you could work in any of the different areas of broacasting that they offered. There was AM Radio, FM Radio, Radio News, TV Operations, TV News and Special Programs. If you were smart, you would try to do something different every semester.

For my first semester, I thought I'd start by seeing what it was like to be a Radio DJ, so I signed up for AM Radio. I learned how to play records, talk on the air and announce the news and sports. I used that opportunity to be completely goofy on my show. I pretty much winged it without really knowing what I was doing. However, once I was reading the news and there was this one story that took place in Masschusetts. Every time, I kept garbling the word "Massachusetts." Dr. B, the head of the Radio/TV department was listening. He called me up while I was on the air to tell me I had mispronounced it. The next time I had to read the same story, I stumbled again. He called again and asked which state had Boston as its capital. I said, "Massachuetts" without goofing it up. He said, "That's the way you're supposed to pronounce it."

One problem with the station is that before I got there, it was a REAL college radio station. The students had complete control over the programming and played the latest bands and the newest music. But the semester I was there, those in charge changed the format to Adult Contemporary and we were forced to play only the songs that fit into that genre. It really took a lot of the excitement out. The only exception was the "Blue Plate Special" program during the lunch hour. That meant we could only be a typical college radio station for one hour each day. A couple of years later, the students were able to get the format changed.

In the Spring semester, I signed up for TV Operations. I learned how the programming got on the air at the PBS station. For some reason, I was late in signing up for a slot and got stuck doing Ops for four hours every Saturday nights. I didn't realize what kind of impact that was going to have on my social life. I also didn't realize that working Ops at night meant that I wasn't going to learn how to switch to put the videotaped shows on the air. The general manager didn't want the students screwing things up during "Nova," but didn't have a problem with it during "Sesame Street." All I did was clean the VTR machines and cue up the tapes. That turned out to be a waste of a Broadcast Workshop for me.

I'm going to extend my freshman year into the summer 1983 school session, even though I was technically a sophomore at that time. Basically, all I did was take the Introduction to Communications class. This class was required in order to take the TV production class. Most TV/Radio students take this during freshman year. I was persuaded by Dr. B to take an Introduction to Broadcasting class that was not on my degree plan.

Under normal circumstances, Introduction to Communications would focus more on broadcasting. However, the professor teaching it during the summer was in the print journalism department and he placed a lot more emphasis on that. One thing I should point out is that our print journalism department sucked. If you're going to go to college to learn how to work at a newspaper, you need to go to one that puts a student newspaper out every day. Ours only came out once a week. I can only imagine that would only help journalism students at ENMU get work at neighborhood weeklies. I probably would have done better in the class if there was more emphasis on broadcasting.

But sophomore year was when the fun really began. That will be next.